face recognition – VentureBeathttp://venturebeat.com
News About Tech, Money and InnovationFri, 09 Dec 2016 15:31:25 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.178053529Copyright 2016, VentureBeatVentureBeathttp://vbstatic.co/brand/img/logos/VB_Extended_Logo_40H.pnghttp://venturebeat.com
25040Venturebeat.comFacebook Messenger’s face recognition tool rolls out to everyone outside of Canada and the EUhttp://venturebeat.com/2015/12/17/facebook-messengers-face-recognition-tool-rolls-out-to-everyone-outside-of-canada-and-the-eu/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/17/facebook-messengers-face-recognition-tool-rolls-out-to-everyone-outside-of-canada-and-the-eu/#respondThu, 17 Dec 2015 17:00:41 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1854096The releases keep on coming for Facebook’s Messenger service. Today the social networking company has announced that it has added new features designed to help you share more during the holiday season. Starting today, Facebook has made its Photo Magic face recognition tool available globally (except for those in Canada and in the European Union) to help ensure […]
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The releases keep on coming for Facebook’s Messenger service. Today the social networking company has announced that it has added new features designed to help you share more during the holiday season. Starting today, Facebook has made its Photo Magic face recognition tool available globally (except for those in Canada and in the European Union) to help ensure that you can send the right photos to the right people.

Previously only available in Australia, Photo Magic will scan through your camera roll and recommend photos to send to your friends. The wider release of the tool is well-timed, as people will likely take more photos with their family, friends, and colleagues during the holidays. And while it can be a hassle to sort through photos and send them to the right people, especially if there’s a large group, Facebook believes that Photo Magic will streamline the process and help you quickly share those moments through its Messenger app.

For those who have access, you can enable it under the Settings menu in the app (Facebook will also prompt you to try it out when you open up Messenger). From there, just snap a photo using the device’s camera — you don’t have to do it within any Facebook app — and then Photo Magic will do the work. It’ll send you a reminder to share the photo, but it won’t be distributed until you tap the “Send” button.

Other Facebook holiday news includes ways to make conversations more customizable. Company executive Stan Chudnovsky alluded to this earlier today in a Facebook post: Now you can personalize your experience, including setting nicknames, choosing colors for your conversations, and more. The company said that it’s interested in having its more than 700 million monthly active users make the service their own.

Oh, if you’re a fan of stickers, then you’ll be happy to know that Facebook now lets you affix Santa Claus, a Christmas tree, or any other holiday decoration to your conversations. Yes, the holiday sticker pack and emoji set have arrived, including one around the Disney movie Frozen.

Android app users will get a special treat as the company has brought back its snow globe effect for chat heads. When having a conversation with a friend, their avatars will appear as winter wonderlands, but will transform into confetti-filled chat heads once the new year arrives.

Update: This post has been updated to correct the fact that when Photo Magic launched last month, it was on both iOS and Android. The incorrect sentence from this post has been removed to reflect that.

The last few weeks have been punctuated by two major developments in the world of European tech and data privacy. First, the EU announced draft data protection legislation (more on that later), and second, Facebook’s Moments app was unceremoniously banished from European soil until an opt-in feature is incorporated into its facial recognition technology. These events are likely to have tech innovators on both sides of the Atlantic scratching their heads – just what are the rules of the game in relation to data protection and tech innovation in Europe?

The simple answer is that the rules are, in many cases, ill-defined and struggling to keep up with the pace of technological change. A perfect example of this is the flexibility built into the EU’s draft data protection legislation. For the uninitiated, the directive is meant to make data rules consistent across the EU. In an ideal world, this will reduce business costs, especially for marketing and data-heavy technology companies, and it will strengthen security and increase privacy for European citizens.

Of course, we don’t live in anything closely resembling an ideal world. To meet the vastly differing expectations of privacy, cultural attitudes, and business climate in each European country, the directive is riddled with ambiguous phrases and flexible clauses. Thirty-five separate provisions will be implemented in different ways in each member state. That means that across the 28 member states of the EU, there will be 28 different ways to interpreted 35 different rules. Not exactly consistent.

The draft directive hasn’t exactly been rushed together to meet a changing technological world. It has been three years in the making and is unlikely to be fully implemented before the end of 2016. In the meantime, the countries of Europe are governed by separate data protection rules and Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (the right to respect for private and family life). As Article 8 was drafted 65 years ago, it is not exactly equipped to deal with the likes of Facebook’s facial recognition technology or the encryption of conversations in WhatsApp. In the UK, data protection regulation was drawn up in the era of dial-ups, Encarta, and Windows 95.

If you’re still with me at this point – well done. The complicated and, let’s be honest, dull nature of data protection in Europe is far removed from the fast-paced, try-or-be-damned world of global tech. However, falling afoul of European data protection laws can have a devastating effect on a startup with global ambitions. Even tech juggernauts like Google have received more than a headache from Europe, with the “right to be forgotten” battle continuing to rage. France is now pushing for the new rule to be extended across the world.

The situation in Europe is also a showcase of wider debate on the balancing act of privacy versus the commoditization or personal information and the reach of tech. Using facial recognition in Moments may seem benign. Nonetheless, the debate has been couched as a “slippery slope”: What if this technology is used en masse by unscrupulous companies or security services? This is, of course, not a fantastical proposition as the Edward Snowden revelations demonstrated. It is also telling that the public reaction to Prism et al varied massively between European countries; Germany – apoplectic, France – annoyed, the UK – mildly miffed.

So how do you protect your startup from falling afoul of European regulators? Well, if you’re data heavy or are unleashing a bleeding-edge app or software platform, lawyer up. If you can’t lawyer up, tread carefully and act ethically. Transparency can be a panacea for placating European regulators. If you’re up front about how you use your customers’ data and what the benefits are, and if you build in clear opt-ins or outs, it will help to mitigate most of the danger. Learning from the mistakes of others is also a no-brainer. Obviously, if you have some form of facial recognition technology in your app, start developing an opt-out if you want to expand into Europe.

However, avoiding regulators should, in my opinion, be a happy by-product of startups acting responsibly and ethically with their customers’ data. It may sound bizarre coming from the CEO of a data science consultancy, but I believe that people should demand and expect more data protection. I also believe that businesses should be less gung-ho about how they commoditize and use personal information. With smart cities, wearables, smart clothes, and facial recognition technology all developing quickly, more and more data on individuals is going to be used and, let’s face it, abused.

Regulation is never going to keep up with these developments. It is therefore incumbent on businesses to act sensibly, avoid being creepy, and treat their customers with respect. If that sounds like a soft, naïve view of doing business, I would argue that, even if you don’t want to manage data responsibly from an ethical point of view, you should do so from a dispassionate corporate perspective. Abusing personal data will inevitably end in huge public backlash. Not only will this undermine consumer trust in new technology, it could also provoke draconian legislation that kills many startups and stifles innovation. Such a development would make Facebook’s Moments kerfuffle seem like the “good old days.”

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/25/facebook-vs-europe-privacy-ethics-and-tech-innovation/feed/01757255Facebook vs. Europe – privacy, ethics, and tech innovationMicrosoft’s TwinsOrNot app can now use Bing to compare you with a celebrityhttp://venturebeat.com/2015/06/23/microsofts-twinsornot-app-can-now-use-bing-to-compare-you-with-a-celebrity/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/23/microsofts-twinsornot-app-can-now-use-bing-to-compare-you-with-a-celebrity/#respondWed, 24 Jun 2015 06:07:26 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1756887Microsoft is at it again, having fun with face recognition technology.
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Microsoft is at it again, having fun with face recognition technology. The company has updated its TwinsOrNot app so that you can now find a picture of someone famous with Microsoft’s Bing image search and then compare it to a picture you upload of yourself.

The app then tries to figure out if you and the person in the picture from Bing are twins.

I just gave it a try — and it was amusing.

I uploaded a headshot of myself and then found a picture of Jason Biggs — friends have told me I look a little like him.

Interestingly, you can permit Microsoft to keep the images you compare in the app. Doing so can help Microsoft improve its computer vision systems further.

Just don’t take the app too seriously.

“For maximum enjoyment, experiment with a wide range of photos but do remember, this app is for fun and entertainment purposes only,” Microsoft said in a blog post on today’s update.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/23/microsofts-twinsornot-app-can-now-use-bing-to-compare-you-with-a-celebrity/feed/01756887Microsoft’s TwinsOrNot app can now use Bing to compare you with a celebrityMicrosoft integrates its How Old face-recognition tool into Bing image search resultshttp://venturebeat.com/2015/05/26/microsoft-integrates-its-how-old-face-recognition-tool-into-bing-image-search-results/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/26/microsoft-integrates-its-how-old-face-recognition-tool-into-bing-image-search-results/#respondTue, 26 May 2015 23:41:55 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1737078Microsoft is now approximating the gender and age of people who appear in images in search results in its Bing search engine. This is a new implementation of the face-recognition technology that Microsoft first showed off last month at its Build conference. To see how it works, just search for a person’s name in Bing […]
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To see how it works, just search for a person’s name in Bing — take our editor in chief, Dylan Tweney, as an example. Hit the images tab, click on one of the pictures, and then hit the little gray button floating in the middle of the picture that says, “#HowOldRobot.” Then you’ll see a little box around the face with an age and gender estimate.

“Sorry if we didn’t get it quite right, we’re still improving this feature,” Bing says in a pop-up that appears when you roll your mouse into the box around the face.

Microsoft in fact does seem to be improving the service, which depends on Microsoft’s Face API. Last week, soon after Microsoft had rolled out a version of the How-Old app for Windows Phone, I uploaded to the web app the same photo of myself that I uploaded when Microsoft debuted How Old Do You Look? at Build. It said I looked 37 — better than the 40 estimate I received when the app debuted a few weeks earlier.

It’s unclear how wide this deployment of How-Old is across Bing. Microsoft did not immediately respond to VentureBeat’s request for comment.

Simply dubbed How-Old, the free Windows Phone app received an update to its user interface on Wednesday. All you have to do to use the app is upload a picture from your phone’s library, and in response, the system will guess the age and gender of every person it can spot in the picture. From there, you can share the results in an email, or on Weibo or WeChat.

It’s interesting that Microsoft poured resources into bringing How Old Do You Look? to Windows Phone. The app went viral and started trending on Twitter shortly after it was demonstrated at Build. But some people found the app to be surprisingly inaccurate and even laughable.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/22/microsoft-releases-how-old-face-recognition-app-for-windows-phone/feed/01735121Microsoft releases How Old face-recognition app for Windows PhoneRobots, deep learning in the spotlight at startup event http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/30/robots-deep-learning-in-the-spotlight-at-startup-event/
http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/30/robots-deep-learning-in-the-spotlight-at-startup-event/#respondFri, 30 Jan 2015 16:00:07 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1651705SPONSORED: The power of GPU-fueled technologies has rocketed a large number of companies to success. Now with Deep Learning -- the use of sophisticated, multi-level “deep” neural networks -- more research and investment is producing ever-more impressive innovations.
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SPONSORED:

This sponsored post is produced in association with NVIDIA.

The power of GPU-fueled technologies has rocketed a large number of companies to success. Now with Deep Learning — the use of sophisticated, multi-level “deep” neural networks — more research and investment is producing ever-more impressive innovations.

Just see for yourself. At the Emerging Companies Summit — coming up March 18th in San Jose — 17 CEOs will take the stage to describe their innovative GPU-based businesses to investors, media, and members of the tech industry.

There will be two main events that day. The first one, called Show and Tell, will feature five companies that each have a 20-minute window to demo their product and answer questions about their company’s vision.

A second event, the Early Stage Challenge, will feature 12 startups vying for a $100,000 cash prize.

From the audience perspective, it’s a rare chance to get a better understanding of GPU-powered technologies, business strategies, and growth opportunities. Here are the five companies you’ll get a chance to see up close at Show and Tell:

1. JIBO, Cynthia Breazeal, Founder and CEO

Described by the company as the “world’s first family robot,” Jibo looks straight out of Pixar, but the plans that founder and Chief Scientist Breazeal has for the desktop social robot are very real. Jibo first appeared on the scene last summer as an Indiegogo crowd fund-raiser, bringing in the tidy sum of $2.3 million, and just recently announced it’s raised $25.3 million in Series A funding. It’s also taken almost 5,000 pre-orders to date, which are expected to start shipping at the end of this year. What will Jibo do? When fully realized, it will act as your personal assistant providing messages and reminders, serve as the family photographer, tell stories to the kids, and even order pizza. The company’s goal is for Jibo to “help families manage, care for, coordinate, and connect with greater ease, engagement, efficiency, and fun.”

2. Herta Security, Javier Rodriguez Saeta, CEO

In an era where security has become a major growth industry, technologies to refine facial recognition are in high demand. Herta Security is on the cutting edge of real-time face recognition and has developed a number of solutions, including Biosurveillance and BioFinder — high-performance video-surveillance specially designed to simultaneously identify subjects in a crowded and changeable environment. On the non-security side, Herta has developed BioMarketing, which can identify parameters such as gender, approximate age, use of glasses, and various facial expressions to enable advertisers to reach an identified audience with a specific message.

3. Clarifai, Matthew Zeiler, Founder and CEO

Clarifai amps up image recognition technology with deep learning software that classifies and auto-tags images according to tens of thousands of categories, objects, and tags. It also serves up similar images for enhanced search capability. Founder Zeiler says that “Clarifai’s deep learning systems have improved orders of magnitude in speed, vocabulary size, and memory footprint, and have expanded beyond images to extract knowledge from all forms of data.”

4. Mirriad, Mark Popkiewicz, CEO

Mirriad’s computer vision technology allows it to offer advertisers seamless brand integration across all screens in videos, old television reruns and film — after the fact. Indeed, the company won an Academy award in 2013 for Advancement in Technology. If you’re thinking product placement, you’re right. But this is product placement on steroids, where content owners, brands, and distributors can come together for total win-wins. Mirriad has deals with major U.S. studios and has worked with top broadcasters in 20 countries.

5. Paracosm, Amir Rubin, CEO

With core technology called a spatial intelligence platform, Paracosm is enabling robots and augmented reality applications to understand and interact with the real world. Their core technology is a spatial intelligence platform that provides the tools to collaboratively capture interior spaces, generate 3D maps, and create immersive experiences. Imagine never getting lost inside a building with detailed 3D maps transforming the way we navigate. Or playing a video game not just in your living room, but with your living room. Or making 60s sci-fi movie scenes of robots fetching your keys and drinks a reality. By enabling robotic perception using 3D maps, Paracosm is helping robots understand the shape of the world.

The Emerging Companies Summit, held Wednesday, March 18, 2015, is part of the annual GPU Technology Conference, taking place at the San Jose Convention Center in Silicon Valley from March 17 – 20. The Summit provides companies with an opportunity to present their technologies to potential investors, partners, customers, analysts and media.

Sponsored posts are content that has been produced by a company that is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. The content of news stories produced by our editorial team is never influenced by advertisers or sponsors in any way. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/30/robots-deep-learning-in-the-spotlight-at-startup-event/feed/01651705Robots, deep learning in the spotlight at startup event What the Jewish Museum shooting tells us about face-recognition technologyhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/06/04/what-the-jewish-museum-shooting-tells-us-about-face-recognition-technology/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/04/what-the-jewish-museum-shooting-tells-us-about-face-recognition-technology/#respondWed, 04 Jun 2014 14:10:55 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1485130GUEST: French policed announced Sunday they had arrested a suspect in the terror attack against the Jewish Museum in Brussels, where four innocent people were shot dead last week. Call it blind luck or dumb behavior: The suspect was arrested in a routine customs check in Marseille after an incriminating AK-47 and a video of the shooting were found […]
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GUEST:

French policed announced Sunday they had arrested a suspect in the terror attack against the Jewish Museum in Brussels, where four innocent people were shot dead last week.

Call it blind luck or dumb behavior: The suspect was arrested in a routine customs check in Marseille after an incriminating AK-47 and a video of the shooting were found in his possession — not because his face looked familiar to the police.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Above: Fedpol Belgium via YouTube

Image Credit: Fedpol Belgium via YouTube.

Or with this one?

Above: Fedpol Belgium via YouTube

Although multiple video recordings of the shooting were successfully retrieved from the museum’s security system, the suspect’s face couldn’t be seen in any of them.

Why isn’t the suspect’s face visible in the pictures? Is it just because he’s wearing a hat? Or is there another much more fundamental reason?

The truth is that the majority of video surveillance systems (or CCTV systems – closed circuit TV) are designed to show what happened rather than who made it happen. CCTV cameras prefer range over focus and usually achieve that by being located very high.

Too high in this dreadful event.

Most security systems owners take the camera height for granted and don’t even stop to wonder if it’s in the right location.

Locating those two museum’s cameras lower would not only achieve better range and better videos but would also could have changed the murderer’s course of action.

Watching the attack’s video footage, it is quite obvious the murderer wasn’t even slightly bothered with the cameras, and we can easily assume he knew he was well-disguised.

Now, what if this terrorist had to face a zoomed-in focused camera located at about an average person height?

Ignoring this hypothetical camera would have led to a clear capture of his face.

Trying to damage the camera in order to avoid it might have triggered an alarm and might have caused him to spend less time shooting.

Disguising himself with a mask might have drawn attention to him prior to the shooting and could have also triggered an alert (some security systems can detect a person wearing a mask or sunglasses and a hat).

Now, I’m not saying that lowering the museum’s CCTV camera would guarantee a definite identification of the terrorist, nor that the end result would have been different. Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that the security situation on the ground would have been improved significantly either by getting a better face capture of the shooter or by complicating his attack.

Indeed, a suspect shown in a CCTV video can be identified, but in most cases the suspect’s face wouldn’t be fully visible, if at all, and the face resolution would be poor, simply because the CCTV system isn’t meant to capture faces.

So what’s the point of having a video surveillance security system if you need to identify a person but you can’t even see his/her face?

This is where face recognition technology steps in.

A massive improvement in face-recognition algorithms accuracy over the last two decades, together with an overwhelming increase in computation power and a sharp rise in cameras’ “pixel per dollar” ratio have made face recognition an important and reliable tool in the security world nowadays.

Facial recognition-based video surveillance systems are designed to capture high-quality face images in real time and trigger an alert when a match is found.

Of course, suspects have to be enrolled in the system’s database in order to be identified in real time, but even if they’re not, their faces can still be captured for later identification against other databases or for advertising them in the media.

Unlike CCTV systems where accuracy isn’t part of the jargon, face recognition-based video surveillance systems are all about preparing the right conditions in order to achieve high-accuracy rates.

The moment we step out of the lab and into the real world, accuracy starts dropping. However, it’s quite possible, and entirely up to us, to create close to optimum conditions on the ground.

When asked, I always answer that the three most important accuracy factors for face recognition are lighting conditions, lighting conditions, and — you guessed it — lighting conditions.

Light stains such as dark shadows or bright light (aka hot spots) tend to distort the face in the photo by messing up the pixel information, which is the basis for any face recognition technology.

Although I can’t stress enough the importance of good lighting conditions, there are a few other factors that are crucial for high face-recognition accuracy: high-quality reference photos of the people in your database, high-resolution video, sharp face images, and camera location, which relates back to lighting conditions.

When configured correctly, face recognition in video surveillance can become a powerful real time tool in your arsenal. It provides a unique security value that can’t be achieved by any other means.

This growing consensus coupled with ongoing technology improvements are driving high demand for face recognition systems. From the FBI with its whopping billion-dollar face recognition project across the nation, through other city and law enforcement agencies in and outside the U.S., we see a great adoption of face recognition technology. We also see fast expansion into commercial and consumer applications.

Somewhat similar to tapping your phone or hacking into your computer, face recognition raises concerns over privacy and civil rights. But the byproduct of misusing and abusing the technology can’t overcome the benefits and its security added value.

Moshe Greenshpan is founder and CEO of face-recognition company face-six.com.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/04/what-the-jewish-museum-shooting-tells-us-about-face-recognition-technology/feed/01485130What the Jewish Museum shooting tells us about face-recognition technologyYou might end up in the FBI’s face recognition database, even if you’re not a criminalhttp://venturebeat.com/2014/04/14/you-might-end-up-in-the-fbis-face-recognition-database-even-if-youre-not-a-criminal/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/14/you-might-end-up-in-the-fbis-face-recognition-database-even-if-youre-not-a-criminal/#respondMon, 14 Apr 2014 18:49:27 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=1449106In light of recent mass surveillance leaks, this program will certainly upset privacy-minded Americans.
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Even if you haven’t committed a crime, you may soon end up in the FBI’s growing biometric database, the EFF claims.

News of this biometric database — a massive collection of finger prints, iris scans, palm prints, and face recognition data — first came to light in 2011. The program, named Next Generation Identification (NGI), allegedly contains “over 100 million individual records” and will have “52 million face images by 2015,” the EFF states.

The FBI’s move to advance its fingerprint database isn’t surprising. Unfortunately, it appears the NGI program won’t be limited to criminals. By 2015, the FBI will reportedly include “4.3 million images taken for non-criminal purposes.”

In addition, the FBI may eventually collect photos whenever an employee submits to a background check. Traditionally, such data would end up in a civil database. However, the NGI initiative will allegedly bring criminal and civil databases together:

“This means that even if you have never been arrested for a crime, if your employer requires you to submit a photo as part of your background check, your face image could be searched—and you could be implicated as a criminal suspect—just by virtue of having that image in the non-criminal file.”

It’s unclear how such a database will be maintained — and what sort of NGI oversight already exists. In any case, this program amounts to yet another example of how easy it is for national security and privacy rights to clash. In light of recent mass surveillance leaks, this program will certainly upset privacy-minded Americans.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/14/you-might-end-up-in-the-fbis-face-recognition-database-even-if-youre-not-a-criminal/feed/01449106You might end up in the FBI’s face recognition database, even if you’re not a criminalDepartment of Commerce mulls privacy protections for commercial use of facial recognition technologyhttp://venturebeat.com/2013/12/04/department-of-commerce-mulls-privacy-protections-for-commercial-use-of-facial-recognition-technology/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/04/department-of-commerce-mulls-privacy-protections-for-commercial-use-of-facial-recognition-technology/#respondWed, 04 Dec 2013 23:11:16 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=868194Facial-recognition technology has received scrutiny from plenty of privacy experts. Now something much bigger — and much more powerful — is taking a look at this oft-controversial technology: the federal government. The feds are looking into facial recognition in the hopes of aiding the Obama administration’s effort to implement the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, according […]
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Facial-recognition technology has received scrutiny from plenty of privacy experts. Now something much bigger — and much more powerful — is taking a look at this oft-controversial technology: the federal government.

The feds are looking into facial recognition in the hopes of aiding the Obama administration’s effort to implement the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, according to Lawrence Strickling of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Facial-recognition technology automatically identifies a person based on a digital image of a still frame from a video source. Often, the use of such technology involves comparing the source image to a database that could potentially contain millions of image records. “It’s like saying here is a person who I don’t know. I’m going to figure out who it is [with the image],” Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Lee Tien told VentureBeat.

After seeking input from a range of experts and stakeholders—including privacy advocates, industry representatives, and academics—the NTIA chose to look into facial recognition’s potential privacy implications, Department of Commerce officials told VentureBeat. The stakeholders involved with the process will dictate the course of discussions and which issues and concerns will be debated. The effort is part of the Obama administration’s intention to improve consumers’ digital privacy protections (warning PDF doc) over the course of the president’s final term in office.

While having the potential to improve various services, the technology poses real risks to consumer privacy, because at present there are no clear standards in the U.S. for facial recognition, according to Department of Commerce officials.

“[Because of facial recognition technology] our practical anonymity, the anonymity we generally enjoy in life, comes under a lot of stresses,” Tien said.

The technology has been controversial for some time. Law enforcement is increasing its deployment of the technology in recent years. “[It] allows for covert, remote, and mass capture and identification of images, and the photos that may end up in a database include not just a person’s face but also what she is wearing, what she might be carrying, and who she is associated with,” the EFF recently said before a Senate subcommittee on the topic.

Tien cautioned that a similar process—regarding privacy notices on mobile devices—was “very tumultuous” and that the EFF will “wait and see what happens with this one.”

The first meeting between various stakeholders will take place at 1 p.m. Eastern on Feb. 6 in Washington, D.C. Video of the meetings will be broadcast on the Internet.

Clarification: An earlier version of this story stated that Lawrence Strickling was an NTIA spokesman. Mr. Strickling is the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/04/department-of-commerce-mulls-privacy-protections-for-commercial-use-of-facial-recognition-technology/feed/0868194Department of Commerce mulls privacy protections for commercial use of facial recognition technologyThis multifactor real-time biometric scanning tech could have prevented the Navy Yard shootingshttp://venturebeat.com/2013/09/19/this-multi-factor-realtime-biometric-scanning-tech-could-have-prevented-the-navy-yard-shootings/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/19/this-multi-factor-realtime-biometric-scanning-tech-could-have-prevented-the-navy-yard-shootings/#respondThu, 19 Sep 2013 21:21:04 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=815154"The information we have on the Navy Yard shootings is that he used someone else's ID card," General Farkash said. "This cannot happen with our system, because you must be identified ... with second-generation biometrics you are the key … your body is the key for your building."
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A new multifactor biometric system from FST21 that identifies known approved people as they walk up to a building or access point could have prevented something like the Navy Yard shootings that took the lives of 13 people in Washington, D.C., on Monday.

“There is a need to find a new paradigm for security and convenience,” FST21’s chief executive Aharon Farkash — a former general in Israel’s military intelligence arm — told me today. “All of the technologies that we use today are individually insufficient.”

FST21, which recently won an award from the security industry association ASIS for its In Motion Identification system, instead combines multiple technologies with as many as eight different identification schemes to achieve 99.7 percent accuracy, even when up to 100 people are approaching an entrance simultaneously.

The difference is not just that the system identifies people on the go. It’s also that there is no key or card to steal or fake.

“The information we have on the Navy Yard shootings is that he used someone else’s ID card,” Farkash said. “This cannot happen with our system, because you must be identified … with second-generation biometrics, you are the key … your body is the key for your building.”

FST21 combines facial recognition techniques with height, gait, length of limbs, voice characteristics, and other physical identifiers with behavioral characteristics such as how you walk, where you enter from, what time you typically arrive, and more.

The system, which uses high-definition cameras in places of standard CCTV cameras, connects the footage to an onsite electronic brain that learns your behavior automatically. Guards can optionally watch footage in real time as the system identifies known personnel, who are visually tagged onscreen with their names in green if “known good” and red if “known bad,” and also highlights unknown individuals.

The system works for high-traffic locations such as train stations as well as major office buildings, Farkash said.

“There is a need for in-motion identification,” he said. “We can deliver security with convenience, for sometimes hundreds or thousands of people.”

First-generation biometric systems sometimes use fingerprints or iris prints, often in conjunction with an access card. But neither are 100 percent foolproof, Farkash told me, and cards can clearly be stolen or forged. A combination system, he argues, with multiple data points coupled with an intelligent system that learns individual people’s bodies and voices is much more robust and reliable.

“It can be used 10-15 feet before the entrance of a building, or by turnstiles,” he said. “And it’s currently 99.7 percent accurate.”

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/19/this-multi-factor-realtime-biometric-scanning-tech-could-have-prevented-the-navy-yard-shootings/feed/0815154This multifactor real-time biometric scanning tech could have prevented the Navy Yard shootingsKeyLemon raises $1.5 million to make your face the password of the futurehttp://venturebeat.com/2013/09/02/keylemon-raises-1-5-million-to-make-your-face-the-password-of-the-future/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/02/keylemon-raises-1-5-million-to-make-your-face-the-password-of-the-future/#commentsMon, 02 Sep 2013 17:49:24 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=806614If you're trying to figure out what might one day replace the password, follow the money.
]]>

If you’re trying to figure out what might one day replace the password, follow the money.

The round — led by Debiopharm Investments and Swisscom Ventures — is the first major bit of funding for KeyLemon, which was founded 2008.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/02/keylemon-raises-1-5-million-to-make-your-face-the-password-of-the-future/feed/1806614KeyLemon raises $1.5 million to make your face the password of the futureGoogle bans face recognition apps for Glasshttp://venturebeat.com/2013/06/01/google-bans-face-recognition-apps-for-glass/
http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/01/google-bans-face-recognition-apps-for-glass/#commentsSat, 01 Jun 2013 21:21:18 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=749103There goes my great plan to use Glass to help me remember people I'm supposed to know.
]]>Google announced via a post on the Project Glass Google+ account last night that it would not be approving any face recognition apps for Glass, at least not immediately.

There goes my great plan to use Glass to help me remember people I’m supposed to know.

Privacy has been a significant issue for detractors of Google Glass, who point out that people wearing the camera-carrying devices can take a picture with just a wink anytime, anywhere … including in restrooms and locker rooms. So Google is being extra-sensitive and careful.

“Many have expressed both interest and concern around the possibilities of facial recognition in Glass,” the company said. “As Google has said for several years, we won’t add facial recognition features to our products without having strong privacy protections in place.”

Above: An early Glass prototype

Image Credit: Jolie O'Dell/VentureBeat

I happen to completely suck at recognizing and remembering people, so I was looking forward to the digital help.

Of course, even with the restriction, there will inevitably be “jailbroken” devices that hackers root, and then install their own software. And, probably, unauthorized Glass app stores just as there are third-party iOS and Android app stores. Google itself has released instructions on how to hack Glass, which will void your warranty.

Glass owners and developers who want facial recognition, however, should remain hopeful. Google said it “won’t be approving any facial recognition Glassware at this time,” (emphasis added).

Which means, likely, that at some time, it will consider allowing face recognition.

Intel says it is making progress on its “perceptual computing” initiative to make computers more intuitive to control.

Last year, Intel talked about how it wanted to go beyond touchscreens and equip everyday computers such as desktops and laptops with technologies such as gesture control, face recognition, voice recognition, and eye control. This year, those initiatives have all taken shape, said Kirk Skaugen, the vice president of the PC client group at Intel, in a press event at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today.

Back in September, voice recognition firm Nuance announced it would provide technology for a series of Dell ultrabooks, or thin and light laptops. That fulfilled on promise of perceptual computing.

Intel showed a demo of Valve’s Portal 2 being played with gesture controls, using motion-sensing technology from Sixense. That game shipped last fall, making it possible to play it by waving your hands around in front of a computer.

“Gaming is very interesting, but we can do other things with this technology,” Skaugen said.

For instance, you can hold more interesting video conferences with coworkers. Using a technology from Personify, Intel showed how you can hold a video chat with coworkers and insert their images into the presentation that everyone is sharing. Since each person viewing the presentation can see the expressions of coworkers, they can more easily tell what kind of reaction coworkers are having.

Skaugen also showed that — not only is gesture computing good for computer games — it is also useful for computer security. He said that face-recognition technology using special webcams is coming along. And both face recognition and voice recognition will provide for much better computer security in the future. Skaugen noted that a recent breach of passwords showed that the top password that people use is “123456.” To get around the problem of character-based passwords, Skaugen believes that perceptual computing will provide security that will be hard to defeat.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/07/a-year-later-intels-perceptual-computing-initiative-is-becoming-more-concrete/feed/0600290A year later, Intel’s ‘perceptual computing’ initiative is becoming more concreteGoogle one-ups Apple, wins face-to-unlock patenthttp://venturebeat.com/2012/09/05/google-apple-patents-mobile-unlock/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/05/google-apple-patents-mobile-unlock/#respondWed, 05 Sep 2012 17:50:56 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=525870Apple may have a patent on unlocking a smartphone via gestures, but Google just won a patent for unlocking any computing device just by looking at it.
]]>Apple may have a patent on unlocking a smartphone via gestures, but Google just won a patent for unlocking any computing device just by looking at it.

U.S. patent #8,261,090 was awarded yesterday. Gaze into the camera, match up with an approved identity, get access to the device.

Or, in patentese:

A method of logging a first user in to an computing device includes receiving an image of the first user via a camera operably coupled with the computing device and determining an identity of the first user based on the received image. If the determined identity matches a predetermined identity, then, based at least on the identity of the first user matching the predetermined identity, the first user is logged in to the computing device.

The patent was filed in late 2011 and is applicable to any generic computing device: laptop, smartphone … anything with a camera.

Similar technologies have already been released in apps on Android such as Visidon AppLock Plus, and iPhone such as FaceVault, and Ice Cream Sandwich already included face unlock functionality. It’s a potentially faster and easier way of accessing your phone, depending on how fast the face recognition is. And it certainly could be a faster way of logging into your computer.

Security is a big question, however.

Would an hacker with a life-size picture of you be able to log into your computer? It turns out that the answer is yes … and a life-size, printed picture is not even necessary:

Which likely means that for secure logins, face-to-unlock is not going to be a great option. Or, at least, will have to be paired with additional security features.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/05/google-apple-patents-mobile-unlock/feed/0525870Google one-ups Apple, wins face-to-unlock patentWikileaks: CIA-connected private intelligence firm TrapWire watching Americanshttp://venturebeat.com/2012/08/10/wikileaks-trapwire-stratfor-cia/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/10/wikileaks-trapwire-stratfor-cia/#respondSat, 11 Aug 2012 06:44:11 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=507248The latest WikiLeaks release has shone a spotlight on an alleged domestic and foreign surveillance program run with cloud-based software provided by Texas company TrapWire, many of whose top leaders and employees are former members of three-letter American intelligence agencies.
]]>The latest WikiLeaks release has shone a spotlight on an alleged domestic and foreign surveillance program run with cloud-based software provided by Virginia company TrapWire, many of whose top leaders and employees are former members of three-letter American intelligence agencies.

WikiLeaks tweeted about it today, and the story quickly became a trending topic on Twitter:

[tweet https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/233847265440190465]

TrapWire produces software that is currently in use by Homeland Security, the military, U.S. intelligence agencies, and local police forces including the LAPD and the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC (whose chief recently praised the software). Private sector clients include major corporations in the energy, chemical, and financial industries.

TrapWire does three things: protect critical infrastructure by analyzing CCTV footage with face and pattern recognition algorithms to detect pre-attack patterns, provide online reporting systems for citizens to report suspicious behavior, and gather and analyze many sources of information to allow law enforcement to make sense of the masses of collected data.

If TrapWire does what it is intended to, it’s potentially a critical innovation that can help protect the U.S. from terrorism. Tying together disparate facts from multiple sources across geographies might have prevented 9-11. On the other hand, the secrecy, the integration with government, and the thought that a private corporation could have access to huge amounts of private citizens’ data is concerning to say the least.

The data WikiLeaks released was taken from more than five million emails allegedly stolen from a company with close ties and inside information about TrapWire, security information company Stratfor. Stratfor had a contract with TrapWire in which each company agreed to promote the other company’s products, and Stratfor agreed to feed its intelligence reports into the TrapWire system.

In those emails, Stratfor says that TrapWire is in use in “Scotland Yard, #10 Downing, the White House, and many [multinational corporations].” One email talks about the Nigerian government being interested in TrapWire, and others imply that organizations as diverse and powerful as the Secret Service, MI5, and the Canadian RCMP are all clients.

And yet another leaked email from Fred Burton, Stratfor’s VP of Intelligence, says “God Bless America. Now they have EVERY major [high-value target] in [the continental U.S.], the UK, Canada, Vegas, Los Angeles, NYC as clients.”

… can collect information about people and vehicles that is more accurate than facial recognition, draw patterns, and do threat assessments of areas that may be under observation from terrorists. The application can do things like “type” individuals so if people say “medium build,” you know exactly what that means from that observer.

… the TrapWire rules engine analyzes each aspect of [reported security incidents] and compares it to all previously-collected reporting across the entire TrapWire network. Any patters detected — links among individuals, vehicles, or activities — will be reported back to each affected facility. This information can also be shared with law enforcement organizations …

The question becomes: Where does national security start and the public’s right (or need) to know end? And, to what extent should private companies be embedded in public surveillance?

Even tougher: does our security depend, at least in part, on our ignorance? Because if we learn about anti-terrorism methodologies, you can bet the bad guys do too.

There is as yet no statement from Stratfor, TrapWire Inc., or any of the named public security agencies.

]]>http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/10/wikileaks-trapwire-stratfor-cia/feed/0507248Wikileaks: CIA-connected private intelligence firm TrapWire watching AmericansThe future of marketing: your facehttp://venturebeat.com/2012/08/09/the-future-of-marketing-your-face/
http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/09/the-future-of-marketing-your-face/#respondThu, 09 Aug 2012 13:00:35 +0000http://venturebeat.com/?p=506037GUEST: To a computer, your face is a set of points and measurements between features, but to advertisers, these data sets mean lucrative profits and a new way to connect with customers.
]]>GUEST:

To a computer, your face is a set of points and measurements between features, but to advertisers, these data sets mean lucrative profits and a new way to connect with customers. Facial detection technology is making it feasible to do real-time measurement and analysis of ads in the physical world and predict the products you will want to buy, based on who you are or what you look like.

In a world full of cameras and ubiquitous gadgets, serious concerns exist over how far advertisers will take this. From the ads outside to the televisions in your home, this technology will be coming to a screen near you.

Next time you’re looking up at a billboard, there’s a chance it may be looking back down at you.

ImmersiveLabs has developed software for digital billboards that can measure the age range, gender, and attention-level of a passerby and quantify the effectiveness of an outdoor marketing campaign. Beyond just bringing metrics to outdoor advertisements, facial detection technology can tailor ads to people based on their features.

Plan UK, a children’s charity group ran a bus stop advertisement as part of their “BecauseIAmAGirl” campaign, where women passing by would see a full 40-second clip (pictured below), while if man saw the ad, it would only display a message directing him to their website. The next generation of systems could take this data collection much further – an algorithm could judge whether you look happy, sad, sick, healthy, comfortable, or nervous and direct personalized ads to you.

Vending machines have been making a high-tech resurgence, selling everything from iPods to high-end cupcakes – some now include cameras that are analyzing your face. Facial detection technology can enable a machine to present a customer with items they would typically purchase based on their physical characteristics. Kraft and Adidas usethis to recommend macaroni recipes to busy mothers and walking shoes to older shoppers.

In Japan, machines using this technology have had threetimestheamountofsales than the non-interactive style. Taiwanese researchers have developed machines able to determine a person’s complexion, use of make-up, or frequency of shaving in order to recommend razors and beauty products they are statistically more likely to buy.

Even Jell-O has machines scanning faces in its promotional campaign for an “adults-only” pudding line – its machines don’t let children have samples.

In the United States, television advertising still accounts for the largest amount of ad expenditures. Reaching an intended audience has never been a perfect science, but with today’s Internet-connected TVs and attached devices, companies have a chance to peek into the living room to see who’s around. Microsoft Kinect, the popular motion-sensing gaming device, has advanced abilities to identify its users and has built an entireadvertisingplatform around “audience engagement” – being able to tell who is in the room, how old they are and whether they are paying attention to what is on the screen.

Today, these types of sensors may be part of the television when you purchase it already; in the last year alone, Sony, Samsung, Lenovo, and Toshiba have each introduced “Smart TVs” with facial recognition technology built in. Intel is reportedly making this technology a centerpiece of its newpush into the commercial TV sector, using it as leverage to bring reluctant media companies on board to their platform. At this rate, it won’t be long before your TV is watching you as well.

These rapid changes raise important issues around permission and what consumers are willing to tolerate. Parents are not going to be thrilled about special advertisements that play for their kids only when they are out of the room. It is very difficult to “opt-out” of a billboard camera scanning your features from above. Measuring your age and gender today could turn into marketing to your weight, race, or emotional state down the line. The underlying technology enables both passive measurement and actively targeted marketing, but the privacy issues surrounding both are markedly different.

These concerns are just the beginning. The possibility of widespread automated facial recognition is on the horizon. With this, a person could be tracked and identified in a matter of seconds – complete with their shopping history and Facebook profile. But what is technologically possible is not necessarily socially and legally permissible. Consumers will soon have to decide what they are willing to accept. Some will be turned off by constant deeply personalized ads, but others will enjoy the greater relevance of the new offers presented to them.

Tarun Wadhwa is a research associate at Singularity University researching how advancing technologies can be used to solve public policy issues. This story was produced in cooperation with Singularity University partner site Singularity Hub.

I met with Polar Rose in its early days when it was talking about a unique approach to recognizing faces. Some inefficient recognition engines would compare pixels in pictures to determine whether one face matched another. That consumed a lot of processing power. But Polar Rose would take the highlights of someone’s face and reconstruct them as a 3D graphics image. That image would contain all of the important points to recognize, but it needed far less data than an image of a face. Rather, the 3D graphics could be described in a series of math equations. That meant reproducing a face and finding a match could be done much more efficiently.

Today, Malmo, Sweden-based Polar Rose has about 20 employees and offers products such as FaceCloud, which allows face recognition for web services, and FaceLib, which brings recognition of faces to mobile phones. As you can see in the video, Recognizr can take a photo of a user and recognize that same person in a video. The technology raises a lot of privacy concerns, of course. Google Goggles has a similar ability to recognize faces, but the service does not do so because of concerns for privacy.

Earlier this month, Polar Rose announced in a blog post that it would no longer offer free end-user face detection and recognition services. Apple has declined to comment on what it will do with Polar Rose. But there are plenty of applications that could benefit from face recognition. Apple has its own Faces recognition system on the Mac for recognizing photos in faces. See the video below: